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Boaz
Asked: 2010-04-17 03:11:06 +0800 CST

How to send the output from a cronjob to multiple e-mail addresses?

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In the beginning of a crontab file you could use the MAILTO instruction to indicate you want the output to be sent as an e-mail to an e-mail address. I would like to send the output to multiple addresses. Is it possible (and how) to specify multiple addresses?

email cron

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It may differ depending exactly which cron daemon package you use, but this is from the manpage of Vixie Cron on Ubuntu Hardy:

    If MAILTO is defined (and non-empty), mail is sent to the user so named. MAILTO may also be used to direct mail to multiple recipients by separating recipient users with a comma. If MAILTO is defined but empty (MAILTO=""), no mail will be sent. Otherwise mail is sent to the owner of the crontab.

    If you're not using Vixie Cron, or aren't sure, try the manual page for the crontab file: man 5 crontab

    Example

    MAILTO="[email protected],[email protected]"
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  2. As an alternative to the above answers, you can send email to a single address which is a mail group or distribution list. This works especially well if you manage multiple servers since it is easier to manage addresses on your mail server rather than in crontab of each individual machine.

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  3. One solution might be a .forward file on that user account which sends mail to the appropriate addresses.

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  4. The best answer is probably to either check your man pages for your distro's current version of cron/crontab to see if there's something that can be done with the MAILTO parameter or specify a mail address that in turn forwards mail to multiple addresses for you.

    There are often two crontab man pages, the configuration file is typically in section 5, so use man -s 5 crontab.

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  5. Add , after each email, e.g.: MAILTO="[email protected],[email protected]"

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